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by leradny
Summary: I know we will never look back.  [LeonYuffie]
1. Chapter 1

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-  
Yuffie will not follow Leon into the sewers. Hell--in fact, even Cid will not follow him because it's "too far down, dammit!" Aerith keeps her stately distance from it, though she will tap on a grate to signal him to come back to the surface.

And upstairs, it is blinding. The noise, the light, the everything. Aerith in her pink dress and Yuffie in her kaleidoscopic whatever the hell she's picked out for the day because she doesn't care, not one bit. It's enough to make him want to go back down there, until Leon remembers that it is the sewers and he is not going to spend more time than minimally possible to regain his sanity and _look_ like he's regained his sanity. It is the only place where he can be alone.

_You've sunk so low, Leon,_ a voice giggles. B-but... no one has ever said that to him. And it is not a voice he remembers...

-

"So _Squall,_ how was your life as a sewer rat?" Yuffie, over his protests of "Leon! Dammit!"

She jabs at him playfully with shuriken he would not have picked for himself. Leon likes normal-sized things, not things big enough to poke out a lung or the eye of a giant Heartless. And Yuffie is so small he wonders how she wields those things so... adeptly. When Leon out started with his gunblade he was--

"And well, everyone has to start_ somewhere._" She hefts the throwing stars and leaves Leon in shock. Half the time he doesn't know what the hell she's saying, but now she's hit right on the mark.

"If you don't have anything to say, then why _bother?_" he barks.

"Who said that wasn't anything?" Yuffie questions, and disappears into the night.

-

"Squall!"

Leon shivers.

It's freaking cold, and luckily his sense of smell has gone where the external heat has taken it--training has given him a minimal boost in core temperature but his hands are still shaking. It's not winter, fortunately, but sometimes he wishes it was.

A little.

"Squall! Hey--Squall Leonhart!" Yuffie bangs on the grate. It's a trick she's learned from Aerith--if she taps politely enough he will come without a fuss and be too surprised to back down where he came from to ignore her. But now she's not being sneaky at all. What kind of ninja is she? She sleuths around in screaming colors and a voice to match--

"Hey! Squall!"

Leon shifts uncomfortably in the dim, subdued green-gray. He wants to answer 'Leon!' but that would be weak. Instead he makes his way to a different grate across the street. Everything is gray in the sewers, but when he climbs up out of it, gunblade in hand: there, there, _there_ is Yuffie.

And about a dozen.

Hundred.

Heartless.

"O_kay!_" Her voice keys on the right pitch for Leon to turn his head. "Leon!_Leon!_ Would you_answer_ me?!" A few frantic kicks at the grate and she even draws back her shuriken. This is when Leon approaches.

"I'm here, Yuffie--here!"

-  
The period after the fight is when Yuffie starts shivering in her sweat and Leon wishes he hadn't picked a short-sleeved jacket. It's never winter in Traverse Town, just like it's never properly summer... but--

"I-I..." Leon looks at the ninja as she gives a mighty shake of her head. As if to get it out of her eyes, but that would be... "I thought you wouldn't come," she confesses, with a voice that's incredibly fragile. Something that would break if you snuck around with it, not muffle your steps.

Did she really think he wouldn't...?

As always, Leon's mouth doesn't match up with his thoughts. It's like being drunk, only not. "You could have taken them all on your own if you just hadn't _panicked,_ Yuffie."

"But I did. I thought you wouldn't come." Yuffie bites into her gauntlet to muffle the shake her voice, then swipes at the front of her dark, dark eyes with the back of her hand. "I thought it was because I called you _Squall._" Another shiver cuts her off, but it's mostly in the shoulders.

Leon doesn't buy it.

"I didn't go up because you called me Leon. I went up because you were scared. If you'd come out straight with it I wouldn't have--"

"But _you_ hide things all the time!" Yuffie accuses him violently, pointing even. She does get violent after a fight--too much adrenaline, he thinks. "I don't know _what_ you're feeling right now. I don't even know if you're _tired!_"

"I don't hide things." Leon brushes ahead of her as they come closer to the house. "You just don't know where to look." The tapping of Yuffie's canvas boots stop. Leon stops too and turns around, with his head first and then his shoulders, his torso, his legs... "What?"

Yuffie sets her face and looks at him like a hawk. Up and down, side to side, all the way through him. Then her face crumples and she wipes at her eyes again stubbornly, shaking her head. "I don't get it."

"Watch me and you will."

"I will?"

"You could have taken them on yourself, remember?"

"...Riiiiiight." Yuffie barges into the house before he does. "Whatever you say, Squally-kins!"

She skips into the light and heat and pink-of-health homeyness, and Leon realizes they smell like blood and sweat and metal. Both of them. He looks at Yuffie, centered in the doorframe with her outline lit by lamps on the inside of the house. The ends of her scarf twirling in the wind of her passing, and it's...

It's... _blinding._


	2. Chapter 2

"...Ha!" Yuffie laughs and ambushes him. "I got it, Squall Leonhart!"

Leon bristles.

"You are tired! You are true of heart!" The ninja starts babbling about random things and Squall (Leon!) brushes past her, starving and ready for something to drink... Then the babble stops. Leon flicks his eyes over to where Yuffie is standing, head tilted in dismay. "You... you _are_ tired. And grumpy--no!" she corrects herself, before Leon _truly_ shows her the meaning of-- "You're sad, Leon."

"I..." Leon numbly opens the refrigerator and takes out a drink, sipping it so he will have something to do with his hands. Sip... "...I saw _flowers,_ Yuffie."

Her wide, dark eyes are shocked.

"You know how long it's been since I've _seen_ those?"

"Aerith likes flowers," Yuffie muses, as if the only thing she can remember about them is that.

"You _do_ know it's been nine years, Yuffie."

"I know! I was eight!"

"Yes, and _I_ was sixteen." Leon moves himself out of the kitchen in a daze, colors foreign and burned into his corneas. The backs of his eyes are still smarting from when he first saw them. And Yuffie follows him frantically, talking again.

"W-whoa! Wait! Where are they? How did you find out about them?! What color are the--"

"They're yellow," Leon answers. "They're yellow and I'll take you to them, even. I'll _show_ you."

"Yellow..."

-  
"There."

Yuffie falls to her knees like she's just dodged a Heartless, and her two gloved hands cup around the strange yellow petals that glow in the half-twilight state of afternoon's demise. "Whoa," is all she can say, sounding choked for some reason. She unwinds the scarf from her neck and holds it next to one of the buds. It pales in comparison, dead overwashed wool bleeding out from the aliveness of the flowers. Yuffie sees it too and she flounders.

"_Whoa..._"

"Are you going to run around and tell _everyone?_" Leon snaps. He's never seen this side of Yuffie and it's making him uncomfortable.

Yuffie stands up and the pale scarf winds around her neck again like the friendliest boa constrictor ever. "Yeah--and _y-you're_ coming with me, Leon!"

"No way," Leon says, ignoring her ill-placed stammer. He turns his back upon Yuffie and the flowers. As he walks away, he hears Yuffie turn too and drop to her knees again. He hears her take a breath--a deep, _deep_ breath.

"_Aerith __**loves**__ these things!_" Yuffie wails, before Leon decides to shut it all out.

-  
Leon's got a canteen that he only uses for water, he swears. Cid is open about his digressions from morality, but Leon is quiet about his strict adherence to clean living. He wonders how they can stand being in the same world together, and how they've done it for so long.

A few minutes of steady patrolling brings him close to the spot with the flowers where no one (he hopes) is around. Leon looks at the flowers, yellow and bursting with life. He looks at the canteen in his hand, half-full. His mouth is sticky-dry, which is the reason he's holding it open. A quick glance around--no Heartless, and thankfully none of his teammates are anywhere near here. Then he tips the whole thing over and lets the water spill out into the dirt, splashing muddy water onto the ends of his boots.

He can fill the flask again later.

-  
A half-month later, and Leon is back at the flowers with flask in hand, open and waiting a whole block before he actually reaches them. Then cheerful babbling stops him a few yards away and there is Yuffie again, her yellow scarf not quite as faded as before--though the flowers are as bright as they've ever been. She turns, due to some instinct, and Leon takes a sip belatedly.

"Kha--" He inhales a drop or two, but that's enough to make him start _wheezing_. "Haugh--"

"Don't pretend like you're not going to do it, Squally," Yuffie tells him, smirking. (Leon bristles.) The ninja stands and brushes her knees off casually, then admits, "We've all been kind of watching over them obsessively. Haven't you noticed? Cid's cigarette ash is still here sometimes."

He hadn't noticed. But Leon doesn't kneel whenever he waters these plants--in fact he doesn't even stop walking. Not really...

"I just stop to blow it off. That old geezer _never_ stops smoking."

"Yuffie, don't call Cid a _geezer,_" Leon tells her tiredly. "He saved all our lives."

"I know. But Aerith _loves_ these babies. C'mere--there are even a couple of _new ones_ sprouting out!" Yuffie kneels and gestures for him to do the same; she grabs his forearm when he doesn't move fast enough, then some of his water spills out into the dirt, and his arm, and her legs.

"Ack!" After her initial jerk of surprise, Yuffie wipes off some of the water nonchalantly enough. Leon shakes his arm, frowning, and then Yuffie starts a little speech. "I talk to them too. I kind of like it. In fact, I think we _both_ kind of like it--me and the flowers, I mean. For some reason I _never_ catch Cid or Aerith walking around here, and _you_ are as visible as a wet dog in a desert so I don't know _how_ I could have missed you."

Coming closer, Leon can see a faint silver sheen on the leaves and some of the petals--grayish dots of ask that haven't blown off completely. And there are a few traces on the ground...

"Yuffie, I wear black," Leon points out. "I only come here at night, when my patrols _happen_ to bring me across. I am _not_ that visible in the dark."

"You have a white shirt and your skin is pretty pale," Yuffie reasons. "Plus you're hot. And commanding. I don't think you could be invisible if you _tried_, unless you were a ninja like me."

"_Ninja?_" Leon repeats, dumbfounded. "_Commanding?_"

"Hot!" Yuffie assures him. "As Cid would say: You're smokin'!"

"You're saying this while we're both in Third District Plaza at nighttime--_almost_ nighttime--in front of a tiny patch of flowers I really only take care of _once_ in a while, and--"

"And _by the way,_" Yuffie cuts in, "I have been_ working_ on my people-watching skills."

"...Th-that... has..."

"Nothing to do with anything," Yuffie finishes it cheerfully for him.

Leon swallows and looks at the flowers, shoulders slumped in defeat. He tilts the canteen over them and a single drop trickles out, weak and pathetic against the dry dirt. He feels a gloved hand come to rest on his shoulder as he closes the flask numbly and returns it to his belt loop; then a small, pointy chin follows suit and Yuffie is almost entirely supported by his right side.

"Are... are you left-handed, Yuffie?" Leon remembers that Yuffie uses her left hand to open doors, and if they're both being random he might as well try it now.

Yuffie shakes her head and he feels it.

"Ambidextrous."

He also remembers that she uses big words.


End file.
